Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,601 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Car 54, Where Are You?
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,106 out of 7601
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7601
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7601
7601 movie reviews
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  1. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    It is good. Not great. But far better than "not bad." Solidly, confidently good.
  2. The Ridiculous 6
    Strange as it seems, if you choose to set aside the female roles in The Ridiculous 6 reducing women to cleavage or to mute humiliation, the movie is a long, long way from the worst Sandler movie ever made.
  3. In Jackson Heights
    Wiseman's film allows everyone their say, so that In Jackson Heights becomes one of the truest images of gentrification and its costs on film.
  4. Joy
    Lawrence is very good in the role, as far as the role goes. But the script never jells; the comedy feels forced and mechanically boisterous, particularly in the crucial early passages.
  5. In the Heart of the Sea
    I wish Howard's film had more of a distinct personality and drive behind it; Howard's made some supremely enjoyable films, in various keys, but this waterlogged, effects-crazed picture isn't one of them.
  6. Macbeth
    Partly, I think, the problem lies in Kurzel and his key performers being so determined to make the language conversational and naturalistic, they forgot to make the individual scenes move.
  7. The Big Short
    If a film can essentially succeed while also remaining essentially frustrating, here's a prime example.
  8. The Revenant
    That first hour is big, and imposing. The rest grows smaller, with the script's self-conscious deeper meanings either layered on top, like pelts, or — more successfully — left to Luzbeki's meticulous images of a sun-dappled 19th century Eden now home to one too many Wal-Mart stores.
  9. Chi-Raq
    If Chi-Raq disarms even a small percentage of those who see it, and provokes any reflection about a gun culture, the uses of satire and the plight of a sadly emblematic city, it was worth the effort. However mixed-up the results.
  10. The Night Before
    Still, it's pretty rich watching Rogen puke all over a Christmas Eve Mass in front of his in-laws.
  11. Secret in Their Eyes
    Writer-director Billy Ray's Americanized redux isn't a disaster, exactly; it keeps its head down and does its job. But nothing quite gels, or clicks, or makes itself at home in its adopted setting.
  12. Creed
    Half the film, written by Coogler and Aaron Covington, revels in cliches, skillfully. The other half sidesteps them and concentrates on scenes and relationships that breathe easily and draw us in the hard way: not by narrative fiat or bald calculation, but through well-written and shrewdly acted encounters.
  13. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    The Hunger Games has completed its tasks well and met fan expectations.
  14. Heart of a Dog
    It sounds sentimental, icky, even, but Heart of a Dog sparkles with its creator's wisdom and droll philosophical insight.
  15. Spotlight
    Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy played a weasel of a journalist in "The Wire." Now he has made a meticulous, exacting procedural on real-life journalists who excelled at their job; had the resources to do it properly; and in early 2002, published the first in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of grim, carefully detailed stories of pedophile priests.
  16. Brooklyn
    It's one of the most satisfying films of 2015.
  17. The 33
    What these men endured is remarkable, and the logistics of the rescue are remarkable as well. The 33 settles for an unremarkable chronicle of that endurance test.
  18. I Smile Back
    While it's a cliche to praise a performance requiring some harsh, fairly explicit on-screen behavior and interactions, Silverman's doing the opposite of grandstanding here.
  19. SPECTRE
    For all its workmanlike devotion to out-of-control helicopters, “Spectre” works best when everyone’s on the ground, doing his or her job, driving expensive fast cars heedlessly, detonating the occasional wisecrack, enjoying themselves and their beautiful clothes.
  20. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Jane is a genius, but she's deeply flawed and complicated, struggling with substance abuse, mental illness, her own past regrets. That dark underbelly adds depth and dimension to the ironic humor of Our Brand is Crisis.
  21. Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    From its initial first-person, behind-the-wheel viewpoint to its final implication of all-pervasive surveillance, Panahi creates a fascinating hybrid that becomes a microcosm of Tehran.
  22. Suffragette
    The torment that Maud is put through is devastating, but Suffragette, as a film, often robs itself of its own emotional power.
  23. Truth
    The film feels dodgy, tentative and uncertain as to how to frame its own protagonist in a complicated story of journalistic compromise (and worse).
  24. Burnt
    Director John Wells dices the action, even the simplest conversation, into five harried shots when one would suffice. The many food-prep montages are cut and paced to the same numbing rhythm.
  25. Room
    The parent/child relationship at the movie's core is endlessly fascinating.
  26. Rock the Kasbah
    Star vehicles this rickety have a way of making the world unsafe for comic democracy.
  27. Beasts of No Nation
    I never felt emotionally exploited by the terrors on screen. Rather, Beasts of No Nation is an act of gripping empathy.
  28. Crimson Peak
    Not even the film's occasional bursts of ultra-violence, or the endlessly oozing red clay, or Hiddleston crying a red tear, or Chastain swanning around in one flaming crimson ball gown after another, can infuse this gorgeous bore with anything like red-blooded suspense.
  29. Bridge of Spies
    The film is an anomaly — a confident, slightly square, highly satisfying example of old-school Hollywood craftsmanship, starring a major movie star brandishing a briefcase, and a handkerchief, rather than a pistol.
  30. Steve Jobs
    The movie, a formidable technical and design achievement, has everything going for it except a sense of Jobs' inner life.
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